These first few pictures of him as a youngster are the ones that hurt the most. He was so cute, sweet, loving, adorable.
Pay No Attention to the Mustache
His First School Picture. It Aged Me An Extra 25 Years
Mathew and Majik Fergus O'Keegan, Esquire. He Loved that Dog.
He was in lots of performances in our amateur show group: The Other Little Theatre.
His First Passport Photo
He was part of my traveling magic show. Here's a clip from one of the performances. I apologize for the poor quality. The machinery of the time and all that. In this trick I explained that the first magic show I ever saw was at an amusement park, late at night, sitting on a blanket, under the stars. And how sometimes now, I go back to that great memory. I then start creating lights, making the lights float around, making the backdrop light up. Then..just as this clip starts...I pluck out two lights from the backdrop and toss them over head whereupon the audience area is filled with rotating, sparkling, red lights (pin spots shining at a disco ball). Then...the magic.
Then the difficult years hit. You know what I'm talking about. When Dad stops being your buddy and best-friend and instead becomes the tyrant overlord who doesn't know anything at all..
First Shave
Wow. He Hit Every Branch on the Pimple Tree, Huh?
18th Birthday
"Happy Birthday to You! Now get out!"
18th Birthday in the Bahamas
We got him through is Bachelor's Degree in Game Programming at the University of Baltimore.
In going through his things, his computer, his picture files, we found a lot of pictures of things he did on his own when he was living in Tennessee and such. It was sorta startling to find out he had an entire life that we didn't know anything about. But then we realized that it was actually kinda gratifying to know that he he and entire other life that we didn't know anything about. A life that was all his own.
I have so many funny stories about him.
- His birth sequence when he shot out of his mom, grabbed the salad tongs out the doctor's hands and was caught like a football by the attending nurse.
- He never crawled. He scooted. His ankles were filthy for months. Then one day he just stood up and started walking.
- The time he sliced his fingers on a razor blade, but was determined that no one would know...in spite of the blood everywhere.
- When he was learning to talk, he had trouble with our best friends' names. Helen and Alice became "Hanun" and "Asses".
- His playmate Bethany smacked him on the head with something and he came to tell us about it. We heard "Beffy bonka mah haim." It took us a while to decode that into "Bethany bonked my head."
- He would gleefully eat pickles and strawberries together. Tuna, however, he would starve to death before eating. No one knows why.
- His first rollercoaster ride at age 2. It was quite accidental. His mother and I were terrified. We got off and he pointed back at the ride and said, "Wheeeee!"
- The first time he made any sort of comparison. We lived in a trailer with a dirt yard. No grass. It rained and the place just turned to mud. I was carrying him from the car to the house and he pointed to the mud and said, "Looks like too-too." (Instead of doo-doo.)
- His first show of anger at about 2 or 3. We had moved to a new apartment and I had one of those spinning office chairs. So we spun him a few times. Then it was bed time. He wanted to spin some more, so we said, "One more then bed." We spun him. He wanted more and we said, "No, no. It's bedtime now." He paused for a moment, then hooked his hands into tiny claws and attacked my arm! Well, we got on to him soundly, put him to bed....then went to our room and laughed like hyenas.
- Bethany dislocated his elbow once and he had his arm in a sling. He was in the living room and tripped on the carpet and gave himself a nasty rug burn on his cheek and chin. I felt bad so we walked up the street to McD for ice cream. He tripped again and skinned his hands and knees. We walked into the store and I'm sure everyone thought I had been beating him!
- When it was just him and me in our apartment and I was working skeleton shift. I was so tired, but he wanted to play. So we played hide-and-seek. He hid...I laid down and took a nap! After about 45 minutes of congratulating himself on a stellar hiding place, he eventually tracked me down and figured it out.
- He believed in Santa for a long time! Our tree only ever had a couple boxes under it. Then on Xmas Eve at midnight, I would "forget" that we needed to be in bed. We'd hear sleigh bells and "Ho Ho Ho!" We'd panic, run to the bedroom, close the door and pretend to be asleep. We'd hear Santa (the guy I hired) in the living room stomping around and eating cookies. (And spraying fake snow around the outline of his boots.) Santa would leave and we'd come back to find a tree stuffed with boxes. For years when kids would say, "It's your parents," Mat would say, "No! We were awake and Dad was hiding there with me!"
- The time we were moving and he smashed his fingers on a toolbox or some such. He said, very calmly, "Excuse me for a moment." He walked sedately into the house. Then we (down in the yard) heard a blood-curdling scream come from his room.
- The trip to the Bahamas where he grabbed the wrong suitcase and instead of a week's worth of clothes had instead brought 50 pounds of video game cartridges.
He was my baby boy...my one and only son. I miss him very much. I wish he were here to celebrate his #29.
